Overruled eBook

The tragedy of love has been presented on the stage
in the same way. In Tristan and Isolde, the
curtain does not, as in Romeo and Juliet, rise with
the lark: the whole night of love is played
before the spectators. The lovers do not discuss
marriage in an elegantly sentimental way: they
utter the visions and feelings that come to lovers
at the supreme moments of their love, totally forgetting
that there are such things in the world as husbands
and lawyers and duelling codes and theories of sin
and notions of propriety and all the other irrelevancies
which provide hackneyed and bloodless material for
our so-called plays of passion.

PRUDERIES OF THE FRENCH STAGE.

To all stage presentations there are limits.
If Macduff were to stab Macbeth, the spectacle would
be intolerable; and even the pretence which we allow
on our stage is ridiculously destructive to the illusion
of the scene. Yet pugilists and gladiators will
actually fight and kill in public without sham, even
as a spectacle for money. But no sober couple
of lovers of any delicacy could endure to be watched.
We in England, accustomed to consider the French
stage much more licentious than the British, are
always surprised and puzzled when we learn, as we may
do any day if we come within reach of such information,
that French actors are often scandalized by what
they consider the indecency of the English stage,
and that French actresses who desire a greater license
in appealing to the sexual instincts than the French
stage allows them, learn and establish themselves on
the English stage. The German and Russian stages
are in the same relation to the French and perhaps
more or less all the Latin stages. The reason
is that, partly from a want of respect for the theatre,
partly from a sort of respect for art in general which
moves them to accord moral privileges to artists,
partly from the very objectionable tradition that
the realm of art is Alsatia and the contemplation
of works of art a holiday from the burden of virtue,
partly because French prudery does not attach itself
to the same points of behavior as British prudery,
and has a different code of the mentionable and the
unmentionable, and for many other reasons the French
tolerate plays which are never performed in England
until they have been spoiled by a process of bowdlerization;
yet French taste is more fastidious than ours as
to the exhibition and treatment on the stage of the
physical incidents of sex. On the French stage
a kiss is as obvious a convention as the thrust under
the arm by which Macduff runs Macbeth through.
It is even a purposely unconvincing convention:
the actors rather insisting that it shall be impossible
for any spectator to mistake a stage kiss for a real
one. In England, on the contrary, realism is
carried to the point at which nobody except the two
performers can perceive that the caress is not genuine.
And here the English stage is certainly in the right;
for whatever question there arises as to what incidents
are proper for representation on the stage or not,
my experience as a playgoer leaves me in no doubt
that once it is decided to represent an incident,
it will be offensive, no matter whether it be a prayer
or a kiss, unless it is presented with a convincing
appearance of sincerity.